\n<\/p>\n
I guess I thought it would be more pleasurable than this to be correct.<\/p>\n
Many days, as of late, I wake up, peruse the general chatter about education\u2014both secondary and higher\u2014in the news and social media, and experience a kind of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu, a sense that I\u2019ve already said what someone else is saying.<\/p>\n
This is probably because I have<\/em> already said what someone else is saying, in many cases years earlier.<\/p>\n One recent example was reading this Matt Barnum piece in Chalkbeat<\/em> <\/em>where he reports that Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy and the creator of the Khanmigo chatbot tutor, now acknowledges that, in Khan\u2019s own words, his chatbot was \u201ca non-event.\u201d<\/p>\n In a 2023 TED talk viewed by millions of people and his 2024 book, Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That\u2019s a Good Thing)<\/em>, Khan had a very different take, insisting that his chatbot would be a very big event\u2014indeed, a revolution! It\u2019s right there in the subtitle: not \u201cmight\u201d or \u201ccould\u201d revolutionize, but \u201cwill.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, in June of 2024, a reviewer of Brave New Words<\/em> evaluating Khan\u2019s case for revolution declared, \u201cThis book is filled with bullshit.\u201d<\/p>\n That reviewer was me. I encourage you to explore the review and the different ways that Sal Khan\u2019s book is bullshit, because it goes beyond the claim of an AI revolution in education. The bullshit is spread deep and it is spread wide.<\/p>\n Having been correct about this nonrevolution, I have been going about my life continuing to write and speak about these issues in an attempt to help other individuals and institutions evolve their approaches to an AI world. My view is that we must help people from many different backgrounds working inside of a wide range of institutional structures to develop their individual, unique intelligences in order to be prepared for a dynamic and changing world and to exercise their personal agency according to their values.<\/p>\n Having been spectacularly wrong, Sal Khan is launching a new initiative, the Khan TED Institute, in partnership with TED (as in TED talks) and ETS (provider of the GRE, TOEFL and Praxis exams). <\/p>\n The Khan TED Institute has ambitious goals, which boil down to an attempt to disrupt higher education via an online experience that combines the capacities of each of these organizations. Again, you can feel free to read all this for yourselves, but I\u2019m going to just summarize it as what it is: bullshit.<\/p>\n The corporate \u201cthought partners\u201d\u2014Replit, Google, Microsoft, Accenture, McKinsey and Bain\u2014on hand to help \u201cshape the program and competency signals to ensure the program stays aligned with the skills corporates value most\u201d give away the game here, which is to provide an alternative credentialing pathway (sticker price $10,000 for the whole degree) that will be accepted by employers. <\/p>\n It is a rolling up of many earlier nonrevolutions (MOOCs, competency-based education, disaggregated institutions) into a pitch for an AI-driven future, pushed by the corporations that most stand to benefit from these futures by locking people into their education and employment ecosystem.<\/p>\n Previously, in order to adhere to the norms of public discourse and to grant positive intentions even when I may disagree with methods or root values, I have strongly but (mostly) respectfully critiqued these sorts of educational initiatives, but those days are over. <\/p>\n These people are my enemies. I have only ill will for this project and wish them failure, because this vision for a future of postsecondary education is a recipe for mass immiseration and public disempowerment. Imagine a world where Microsoft, Google, McKinsey, et al\u00a0\u2026 get to determine what and how you learn from cradle to retirement. <\/p>\n Anyone involved in higher education, particularly public higher education or private higher ed where your institution is not insulated by wealth and privilege, should also view this project as a direct assault on their continued existence. The higher education sector and those who have historically been responsible for it (government, voters, etc.\u00a0\u2026) should pause and reflect on how what\u2019s happened to the sector has made it potentially vulnerable to this sort of program, but we also must set recriminations aside and deal with the threat directly.<\/p>\n The good news is that right now, this thing is an agglomeration of corporate mucky-mucks and a press release. There\u2019s no doubt that Sal Khan gives good TED talk, but his history of failure relative to his stated intentions is both instructive and encouraging. He still does not know how to help the vast majority of people learn, and the Khan TED Institute is, in the words of ETS CEO Amit Sevak, \u201cworkshopping the pedagogical design.\u201d<\/p>\n I suppose any revolution starts with the manifesto, but it is difficult to see how this arrives in a place where it can realize its intention to achieve \u201cthe highest form of accreditation.\u201d That said, the trillions of dollars in corporate wealth among that initial set of \u201cthought partners\u201d suggests there\u2019s some very deep pockets willing to pursue the vision, and who knows what kind of pretzel shape accreditation agencies can be bent into over the next three years?<\/p>\n The other good news is that higher education has something to offer that the Khan TED Institute cannot, opportunities to be in genuine and meaningful community with others as each individual develops their unique intelligence. If these values can be embraced and instantiated in the work of the institution, colleges and universities will be unmatchable. This already happens every single day in our nation\u2019s colleges and universities, but it may not happen consistently enough, or for enough people to be able to champion this vision to all.<\/p>\n The list of things that must happen to live those values is long: making sure educational opportunity is affordable and accessible, prioritizing the development of individuals, infusing instruction and experiences with a deep sense of purpose so students desire to learn, rather than outsourcing their schooling to AI.<\/p>\n We could go back in time and identify lots of different points along the continuum where higher ed got off this track, but that fact doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s impossible to reorient toward meaning and deep values.<\/p>\n This work must be supported up and down the ladder of responsibility. It must be promoted as having value beyond economic ROI and whatever the Khan TED Institute cooks up. <\/p>\n I know it\u2019s not impossible because, at least at times, I\u2019ve lived it as both a student and instructor. I wouldn\u2019t be so exercised over Khan\u2019s proposed incursion if I hadn\u2019t experienced the far more desirable alternative for myself. <\/p>\n Who\u2019s ready to step up to the challenge?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I guess I thought it would be more pleasurable than this to be correct. Many days, as of late, I wake up, peruse the general chatter about education\u2014both secondary and higher\u2014in the news and social media, and experience a kind of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu, a sense that I\u2019ve already said what someone else is saying. This<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48344,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[496,1039,495,7426,24224,14549],"class_list":{"0":"post-48343","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-education","9":"tag-failure","10":"tag-higher","11":"tag-khan","12":"tag-sal","13":"tag-serial"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/48344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}